“UKIP are in a death spiral” – Assembly Member & Former MP Reckless defects back to the Tories

“I know there is still “bad blood” from the time I quit the Tories to join UKIP. It’s not for me to waltz back into the party with any sense of entitlement. I want to focus my efforts here with some humility.” – Mark Wreckless

First their elected leader resigns after just 18 days. Then they beat up a leadership contender in the European Parliament, resulting in him being hospitalised. Then they lose a by election in Stoke – a city they themselves branded the ‘Brexit capital of Britain’. Then their only MP defects to become an independent. Now Mark Wreckless, the other (former) UKIP MP has defected from the party.

UKIP are dead. The main threat to Labour for the Working Class vote has gone.

If UKIP can’t win a by election when 69% of the electorate are paid up advocates of their main policy, when can they win? The answer is never. They are done. That’s what the story should be at the moment. The narrative in the media should be about the death of UKIP. This latest defection is just yet more evidence that the party is over for the UK Independence Party. It has left those remaining in the increasingly empty club fuming and seething with bitterness and rage:

“He’s betrayed the trust of all of those who selected him in the first place to be a candidate and all of those who worked to get him elected to the assembly. He’s got no mandate to sit in the assembly as a member of the Conservative group.” – UKIP assembly group leader Neil Hamilton

This body blow comes after the destructive defection of Douglas Carswell last week. The signs of this unravelling have been on show since last year, however, as the incident involving Steven Woolfe MEP in the European Parliament proved.

Touted as a leadership prospect, Woolfe eventually quit UKIP on the grounds that UKIP was “ungovernable without Nigel Farage leading it”. He also pointed out that the EU referendum united the party, and stated that UKIP had entered a “death spiral, of their own making” since the Brexit result.

This all came after Woolfe was beaten up by his own UKIP party members in the European Parliament. Months later, Diane James was elected as UKIP leader. She lasted 18 days before resigning. Then Paul Nuttall was elected leader. during the Stoke by election campaign he got caught out lying about his connection to the Hillsborough disaster (again).

All of these antics combined helped Nuttall lose the Stoke by election. After that came the defections, of which Reckless’s is the latest and most damaging.

Nigel Farage must be looking at the carcrash of a party he once led and be ever more tempted to take that Tory Lordship he’s supposedly been offered.